Bitter Harvest (Harvest Trilogy, Book 2) Read online

  At the mention of Ridley’s name, Richards looked up from the floor, a haunted expression on his face.

  “We’ve also mapped their social network,” Jack added. “That allowed us to identify the industrial areas they were targeting, and…”

  Lynch cut him off. “What about the bag?”

  Jack and Naomi exchanged glances. Richards looked up again at that one.

  The Bag, as it had come to be known, was their boogeyman. The harvesters had used humanity’s technological base to create strains of genetically engineered crops, starting with corn, that served as a means of artificial procreation. Any earthly creature, including human beings, that consumed the seeds or the fruits of the resulting plants would literally be transformed into one of the monsters. They had seen the results during the terrifying last hours in the old Cold War missile base in California that had served as the secret headquarters of the Earth Defense Society. The harvesters, through their proxy corporation New Horizons, had created thousands of tons of the lethal corn seed, and with great fanfare had shipped them from a central processing facility. It would have been a global disaster, except that Renee Vintner had pulled off a brilliant infiltration of the routing information for the tractor trailers hauling the seed, directing them to secure disposal facilities instead of distribution centers.

  Everything had gone well, except for one thing: a solitary bag of seed, perhaps a hundred pounds, was missing. That could be anywhere from one hundred and twenty-thousand to more than three hundred thousand individual seeds. Each could produce a corn stalk, and every kernel on every ear of corn was a biological weapon. The bag had been on the manifests, but had not been on the truck. And there was no record of what had happened to it.

  Over time, most had simply assumed it had been a mistake. But Naomi, in particular, knew how thorough the harvesters were. She was convinced the bag wasn’t a clerical error. She, Jack, Richards, and the others who knew the truth remained terrified that the bag existed.

  But they hadn’t found it.

  “The Bag, doctor,” Lynch said. “You’ve made no progress at all in finding it, have you?”

  “No, sir.” Naomi shook her head, but kept her eyes fixed on Lynch.

  “It’s not for lack of trying, Mr. Vice President,” Jack told him. “But the records were destroyed when we blew up the processing facility, and it’s been like trying to find a particular grain of sand on a beach that’s miles long.”

  “The FBI has come up empty-handed, as well, despite focusing tremendous resources on the problem.” The new FBI Director shot a less-than-kind glance at his predecessor.

  “The bottom line,” Lynch said, “ is that it’s impossible for the president to justify the funding for an agency that’s not producing anything. Going over the same samples and regurgitating the same information in different ways isn’t going to cut it. As I understand it, finding The Bag was the number one priority, but that’s gotten absolutely nowhere. And no one is really even sure if it existed in the first place. As I’m sure you’re aware, one of the president’s big planks, along with undoing the ecological disaster in central California, is cutting government waste. And we’re starting with your agency.”

  After a brief pause while Jack and Naomi digested that news, Lynch continued. “As for your false identities, DHS and FBI will issue a low profile joint press release explaining that both of you had been working undercover and had infiltrated the Earth Defense Society. We’ll say that putting you on the most wanted list was to assist your efforts at infiltration. That can then be tied into Special Agent Richards’ heroic deeds at Sutter Buttes, as the Curtis administration previously reported to the media.” He gave them a sympathetic look. “The president and I understand what Curtis was trying to do by giving you false identities. But the fact is that President Miller is determined to distance his administration from everything Curtis did with the EDS affair. In the inquiries that Congress is planning, your identities and roles in what happened are bound to come to light, and President Miller isn’t about to get caught holding the bag, if you’ll pardon the expression. Better we return you to the mainstream now, with a positive spin, than have you discovered later during an inquiry.”

  Jack could understand the president’s reasoning up to a point. But he also had no doubt that he and Naomi would likely be the focus of unwanted police attention for the rest of their lives. And some people would never believe that he hadn’t been involved in the crimes of which he had been accused, which included killing FBI agents.

  He glanced at Naomi, but she was staring fixedly at Lynch. The skin of her neck and cheeks were a bright red. Richards looked like he’d been whipped. Jack closed his eyes for a moment, trying to control the sickly sensation of free fall that had threatened to overcome him.

  Opening his eyes, Jack caught the vice president’s gaze. “Is anyone going to continue to pursue the possibility that The Bag exists, or is everything just going to be dropped and swept under the rug?”

  “That’s no longer your concern, Mr. Dawson.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Howard Morgan stood at the window that ran along one side of the conference room, looking over the Los Angeles skyline. It was late afternoon, and for a change the sky was clear of haze after last night’s heavy rain. His eyes, dark as his skin, took in the light of the setting sun reflected from the glass and steel structures much like the one in which he stood.

  The conference room was on the top floor of the head corporate office of Morgan Pharmaceuticals. Morgan had built the company from the ground up over the course of fifteen years, taking it from a very small pharmaceutical test lab to an industry powerhouse netting three billion dollars in annual profit. The company had capitalized on its lab experience, of course, but had also branched out into vaccine development and other areas. But he didn’t want to just produce more of the existing vaccines or even develop better ones. He wanted to create something revolutionary, something that would rival Jonas Salk’s success with his polio vaccine, or Edward Jenner’s victory over smallpox.

  Or something even greater.

  While profit and the prestige of his company were certainly part of Morgan’s motivation, he had far more personal reasons for wanting a monumental breakthrough. His oldest son had died of AIDS, and his wife had died two years later, a victim of breast cancer. His two younger children, Alissa and Charles, were both in college.

  The research arm of the company had two entire divisions focused on breast cancer and AIDS, with three more divisions working against various other communicable diseases.

  Despite several major advances made by his company in disease research, the singular victory he sought, a breakthrough that would leave his mark upon mankind, continued to elude him.

  And that was the reason for this meeting.

  He turned away from the expansive view outside to face the twelve members of the board. His apostles, as he sometimes referred to them, sat around the gleaming mahogany table, their attention fixed on him.

  Dr. Adrian Kelso, the company’s scientific advisor, sat at the table opposite where Morgan was standing, and had a decidedly unhappy look on his face.

  “Adrian,” Morgan said, “do you mean to tell me that after nearly a year and an investment of thirty million dollars in research, we essentially have nothing.”

  Kelso’s bushy eyebrows shot up at that. “No, sir, that’s not at all true! We’ve learned a great deal from the Beta-Three samples, and in time we’ll learn much more. It’s a treasure trove!” He held out his hands, as if in supplication, to Morgan. “But the simple fact is that the technology represented by Beta-Three is so advanced that we have no hope of replicating it any time soon. We might have our arms around the system that’s used to deliver the payload in the next two to three years. Just that will be a revolution for distributing vaccines and administering inoculations. But the Beta-Three payload itself?” He threw up his hands in another of his many gestures. “It’ll be at least that long before we can e
ven map the gene sequence, let alone fully understand or reproduce it. Whatever it is, it’s far more complex than the human genome.”

  Morgan folded his arms and paced around the room, the slow, measured click of his heels on the floor the only sound in the uncomfortable silence.

  Beta-Three, as it was known, was the company’s crown jewel. But, as only a very few beyond this room knew, it wasn’t a product of his company. While Morgan considered himself an honorable man, he was also honest enough to recognize the opportunist within him. In the high stakes world in which he lived and breathed, honor and opportunity often collided. He sided with honor as much as he could, but was unafraid to set aside his scruples when necessary.

  The samples to which Kelso referred were the result of such an opportunity that had arisen from a disgruntled employee within the now-defunct New Horizons Corporation, whose assets Morgan Pharmaceuticals had purchased. The deal had been consummated through an intermediary, and the seller had been paid handsomely for a sample of the latest line of genetically engineered corn, then known as Revolutions. Much to Morgan’s surprise, the source had provided not just a few sample seeds, as had been expected, but two thousand four hundred and thirty-eight of the tiny, precious objects. A full pound of them, in a sterile nitrogen-filled container that the employee had somehow smuggled out of the New Horizons plant that had subsequently been destroyed by the Earth Defense Society terrorists.

  Only two people other than himself knew how Beta-Three had been acquired. Everyone else was bright and loyal enough not to ask questions.

  The seeds had been placed in secure storage in one of the company’s research sample vaults. Access to them was highly restricted, although successively more researchers had been brought in on the project because it had exceeded all of Morgan’s initial expectations for the value of the technology it contained. If Dr. Kelso had been given his way, an army of thousands would be working on it, with Kelso leading the way.

  Morgan would have liked to oblige him, but the situation with Beta-Three had become troublesome. After the New Horizons disaster, the Curtis administration had clamped down, brutally hard, on every application of genetic engineering applied to commercial seed. The Revolutions seed from New Horizons had been identified as a biological weapon of mass destruction that the Earth Defense Society had somehow engineered and infiltrated into the New Horizons plant.

  Why the EDS had then destroyed the plant was a bit of a mystery that was still being batted around.

  Morgan didn’t particularly care about what the spin doctors in Washington said. But the possibility that the seeds could be a bioweapon had given him pause, just as he was considering both planting some seeds in a test field and feeding some to test animals to analyze the results.

  With federal investigators rampaging through the genetic engineering community, he had set those ideas aside, judging them too risky. But by then Kelso and his people had learned enough about the seeds to have an inkling of the massive potential of the technology they contained, and Morgan had judged that pursuing this golden goose was worth the risk of incurring the government’s wrath.

  And so, instead of destroying Beta-Three, he had ordered research to be continued under the auspices of one of the vaccine research divisions, thereby getting it out from under the direct scrutiny of federal investigators keeping watch on the genetics research divisions. They would only conduct analysis of the existing samples under very secure conditions, but analyze it they would.

  The good news had been that newly elected President Miller had made no bones about reversing Curtis’s policies on genetic engineering. “Full speed ahead!” Those were the words Miller had used in a meeting with corporate executives, including Morgan, from across the industry. It was music to everyone’s ears, although they understood the reality that Miller was beholden to them, considering the millions that the men and women in that room had contributed to his campaign. Even now, so early in the new administration, nearly all of Curtis’s restrictions and regulations on the genetic engineering community had been rescinded.

  Morgan stopped pacing and turned to face Kelso. “That’s not acceptable, Dr. Kelso.” Kelso flinched. Unlike most of his peers, he actually hated being called doctor, and Morgan only called him that when he was displeased with him. “We have in our hands what is probably the most advanced genetic technology in the world.” Despite his discomfort, Kelso nodded emphatically. “And I am not about to sit here and wait for years before we even know what it can do!”

  A woman at the far end of the table cleared her throat.

  “Yes, Karina?” Morgan’s eyes bored into her. It was a clear sign that she had better have something truly earth-shattering to say.

  The woman was not intimidated. A tall, athletic blond, Karina Petrovsky was Morgan’s chief of security, and the one who had arranged the deal to acquire Beta-Three. She was as intelligent as she was attractive, and the combination of those traits had served her extremely well in her job. “Sir, this morning I happened to see a press release that may bear on the situation.”

  Morgan nodded for her to continue.

  Holding his gaze with her own ice blue eyes, she continued. “The FBI and Homeland Security reported that two individuals who had been in the Earth Defense Society and had been killed in California were working undercover for the government and are very much alive. Their names are Jack Dawson and Naomi Perrault.”

  “Perrault?” He’d only heard Dawson’s name on the news when the manhunt for him was on last year. Dr. Naomi Perrault, however, was another matter entirely. He had tried to recruit her, but New Horizons snatched her away. It was a loss he had always deeply regretted.

  Petrovsky smiled. “Yes, sir. As you know, Dr. Perrault was a senior researcher at New Horizons. She worked on the Revolutions project until a year before that product was to be released. While she is apparently in good standing with the government, my sources say that she just lost her job with a think tank that President Curtis had established, but that President Miller has now shut down.” Tilting her head to one side, she asked, “Perhaps Dr. Perrault would be interested in continuing her work?”

  * * *

  Jack, Naomi, Carl Richards, and Dr. Renee Vintner sat around the small dining room table in Richards’ apartment. Even while he was working as acting Director of the FBI, Richards had refused to move out of the one-bedroom bachelor pad where he had lived for the last twelve years.

  Of course, it was no longer a bachelor pad. He now shared it with Renee. Their relationship had been highly discreet, which meant that the entire Bureau knew about it. But that was because the people he and Renee worked with were extremely perceptive, and no one had cause to raise a stink about it. Richards had been an extremely popular director during his brief tenure, despite his longtime proclamation that he was the FBI’s “number one asshole.” Renee had been popular because she was one of those people you simply couldn’t help but like. Assigned to work as a liaison at the FBI with the agency headed by Jack and Naomi, Renee had worked closely on a daily basis with Richards. They had also shared the horrors of what had happened at Sutter Buttes. Impossible as it seemed, a romance had blossomed between the two.

  Jack and Naomi had heartily approved.

  The mood around the table now, however, was somber. It was the day after the meeting with the vice president. They had wanted to get together right away, but Richards couldn’t get away from work the previous evening until nearly midnight.

  Pouring another round of wine as they continued to dig into the spaghetti Richards had prepared, Jack said, “You look like you need a vacation, Carl.”

  “At least I’ve still got a damn job.” Looking as if he was going to be sick, Richards set down his fork and rubbed a hand across his face. He had said very little since Jack and Naomi had arrived. Renee had tried to lighten the mood with some good-natured ribbing, but Richards hadn’t risen to the bait as he normally did. Even the antics of their three Abyssinian cats, whom he had christened Hu
ey, Dewey, and Louie, chasing a tightly wadded ball of aluminum foil across the floor failed to elicit a smile. Richards looked across the table at Jack and Naomi, an expression of misery on his face. “You two have to know that I wanted to tell you what was coming. While I didn’t know the specifics, I knew over a week ago that you were going to get shit-canned, but I couldn’t say a damn thing. Harmon, our new boss, put a gag on me.”

  “He’s a jackass.” Renee shook her head, glancing at Richards. “They should’ve just left well enough alone and kept you on as director.”

  Richards waved away her assertion with a look of irritation. “I don’t care about that. I never wanted the damn job, and only did it because President Curtis asked me. And because I owed it to Director Ridley.” The others nodded, recalling that former Director Ridley, deceived by the harvesters, had died a particularly agonizing hero’s death that had struck Richards hard. “It’s a political appointment and that’s that. I’m relieved, to be honest. I thought I had a bunch of bullshit paperwork to deal with before. How anyone stays sane in the boss’s chair is beyond me.”

  “Oh, you’re so full of crap!” Renee poked him in the shoulder. “You enjoyed it and don’t say otherwise.” She looked over at Jack and Naomi, rolling her eyes. “God, Carl, you’re such a contrary old fart.”

  Richards picked up his wine glass and muttered something into it, but the others could see he was trying hard to suppress a grin.

  “So what are you two going to do now?” Renee’s voice turned serious.

  Jack and Naomi exchanged glances.

  “We’ve got enough saved away to tide us over for a bit while we figure something out,” Jack said. He looked at Richards. “I think it’s probably safe to say that I won’t be returning to the Bureau or working in any law enforcement job. Even with our names officially being cleared, there are still going to be a lot of people who won’t believe it, and plenty of hard feelings after the deaths of the agents at Sutter Buttes.” Richards nodded, clearly unhappy. Jack shrugged. “Hell. I don’t know. I’ll figure out something.”